Yg Mission Feature Story

Spreading Agape By Melissa Beck

NEW CANAAN, CT-- 6:00 a.m. on a chilly, Thursday morning, 78 high schoolers and 12 advisors from New Canaan, Connecticut loaded onto three buses and headed out to LaGuardia airport to begin their mission trip to Mobile, Alabama. YG is a youth group associated with the Congregational Church of New Canaan and has youth group programs for kids in grades 2 nd through 12th. YG is a high school youth group founded in 1994, traveling with as many as 175 high schoolers. YG is partnering with Raise the Roof foundation, a nonprofit that serves people of faith living below the poverty line, to rebuild houses. Thomas Welch, 17, has been passionate about the YG programs since he was in 4th grade, participating in Guppies, youth group for 3rd and 4th graders, then JYG, junior youth group and then MSYG, middle school youth group. “The trips are definitely my favorite part because you get to travel and see different parts of the country and get to help people out and meet all kinds of people,” Welch said.

Team Aloha works on repairing a homeowner’s wall

The 78 Mission Fish, as they’re known, have been preparing since November to spend their February break serving the Mobile community. They have attended YG every Sunday at the Congregational Church from 7:30 to 9 p.m. planning team bonding events and working on small service projects around their town.

Senior Mia Berg has been on two YG mission trips and is also an active member of her Catholic Church but the community in YG pulled her in right away. “I got involved in YG because I was already involved with my church group Ameis, the Catholic Church group, and my best friend did YG, she said it was a great time and great experience,” Berg said. “My favorite part, quite frankly, is the free time playing cards. I feel like in the new world we have a lot of technology and we never have time to sit down and play cards so that’s the best part.”

While the high schoolers do get time to live in the moment, they also spend multiple times throughout the day praying and talking to God. “There’s a large segment of the trip that’s faith oriented and I think it does help because in regular life you don’t get the opportunity to think about your faith,” Welch said. “But when you go on these trips, you’re in an environment where you get to think on it and pray on it as a group” Seven teams of 8 to 12 kids spread out throughout Mobile, building ramps, painting a school, and reconstructing a third of a family’s house. This week of no cell phones, no cliques, and all service aims to create unconditional love, or Agape, between the Mission Fish. They are thrown into an unknown area and are told to lean on God and this organization to help them in their faith journey.

Welch hammering and deconstructing the old wall

“It really does not feel real because YG has been such a prominent aspect of my life for the past 8 years because I was also a part of the middle school youth group and I don’t know what I’m going to do without it,” said Senior Katie Miller, who’s been on five mission trips. “But I’ve made friendships that I know will last outside of YG which makes it easier to accept the fact that tomorrow’s my last day.” The YG trip is largely centered around the “senior leaders” as it is their last trip as mission fish. They are given bracelets with the coordinates of the church on it and stand up and give advice to the rest of the program on the final night.

Final worship is a time for reflection and gratitude after 9 days of work. Each fish is given a fish pendent to remind them of the values they learned on this trip and who they are at heart. “For me as cliché as it sounds it’s been a family. It’s kinda what I was talking about with Allison is that the friends you make here will show me empathy rather than sympathy and they’ll go through it with me,” Miller said. “My friends outside of YG sympathize with me, but they’re not going through it with me.” YG creates bonds that continue to last and grow. They continually have mission fish return as alumni and advisors to serve the program that taught them so much. “I think a big part of it is perspective, you always gain it when you’re here,” Berg said. “You see these broken homes and I always hear my parents complain “oh the yard is looking gross” but you don’t really know…like these houses are absolutely broken.” Coming from New Canaan, these students have grown up in an area with unlimited resources so when they travel to places such as Mobile, Alabama the reality that people don’t live the life of luxury they do may come as a shock. It allows them to serve others that need the help and show them that God hasn’t forgotten them. “Live your life with a kinda heart of forgiveness and a heart of love and know that people have their days and are grumpy but there’s something behind it,” Miller said. “You know that your true friends will always be with you no matter what you do” As they say, “Long Live, YG”.

Berg poses for photo on the first rainy day on the worksite